Credit: Our Daily Bread Ministries
Jesus said:
“Truth is always tempered with compassion. I have observed some people on your human plane who say, ‘Well, it’s only the truth’ and it is so cruel. That is not what truth is. …
Many of you have studied and say, ‘Suffering is a choice, Master.’ Yes, part of suffering is a choice; part of it is sometimes in the Divine Plan – either of the soul, the individual or the group.
“But I say to you: Where is the compassion in such a statement? Is it not sad that any being – consciously, unconsciously, or in accordance with God – would choose suffering? For even when it serves and teaches, it hurts!” (1)
The person who would say “Suffering is a choice, Master” is in my view taking the same self-righteous position that I took most of my life, a position that’s only superficial and at best intellectual.
But lacking an awareness of feeling and an ability to feel consciously, the best they can hope to express is an informed self-righteousness. The highest it gets for them is a moral code.
If all life is about discovering who we are at essence, (2) this tendency takes us a small distance down the road and then leaves us in a cul-de-sac. That is, after a point, it goes nowhere, as Jesus is pointing out.
Nothing being experienced, but only known as ideas in our head, makes compassion out of reach. Compassion for me is feeling for and with another, walking a mile in their shoes, seeing life from their perspective.
I made a resolution long ago that I’d never discuss what appeared to be another person’s karma. I’d never look into it or concern myself with it. How the heck was I to know what it might be?
My job was to assist them through what they were experiencing, with compassion.
The determination of karma happens at a higher pay grade. At my pay grade, compassion is the lesson to be learned.
My brand of the intellectual did not feel. For many years I was unaware that I didn’t: It was don’t know I don’t know.
Later I was aware but still not feeling a whole heck of a lot. But I now see that that which was once a luxury has now become a necessity. If I’m to be a successful humanitarian philanthropist, I need to feel compassion. I need to feel.
Gandhi said that he put only one thing ahead of truth and that was ahimsa – harmlessness. Although I haven’t been able to find that quote, here is a near equivalent: “I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.” (3)
Harmlessness is the pinnacle of compassion, he said – extending one’s compassion to everyone and everything, without question.
Harmlessness is walking, living, breathing compassion. Gandhi and Jesus are on the same wavelength.
For me, that’s the destination for a humanitarian philanthropist. That’s my goal: Compassion first and then truth (tempered by compassion). My working hypothesis is: Never can harmfulness be the truth of life; only love will prove to be the truth.
We’re in a process of constant unfoldment. “Unfoldment” for me means behaving consistently with the Fifth-Dimensional goal of a world that works for everyone.
This is only a note about unfoldment as a humanitarian philanthropist.
There’s also unfoldment as a sacred partner, as an artist (writer), as a servant of the Mother, on all fronts.
And unfoldment as a member of a soul group (lightworkers) “going up” together; unfoldment as one among numberless spiritual aspirants seeking Ascension, moksha, liberation – the historic goal of all Earth’s sages since Vedic times – and the goal of this generation.
Footnotes
(1) Jesus, “Chapter 6 – Blessings” from Linda Dillon, The Jesus Book. Port St. Lucie, 2017.
(2) On the purpose of life, see “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/
(3) Easwaran Eknath E., Gandhi the Man : The Story of His Transformation. Nilgiri Press,1997, 43. Easwaran said:
“Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or rather a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say which is the obverse and which the reverse? Nevertheless ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end.”
“One cannot find truth without practising ahimsa [non-violence].” (Saskia van Golest Meijer, “The Power of the Truthful: Sathya [Truth] in the Non-Violence of Gandhi and Havel,” International Journal of World Peace, June 2015, 23.)